Torsten was too restless to go to sleep.  He was in the bedroom.  He was pacing.  He was thinking.  He was snapping the bones in his wrists impatiently.  

If he was honest, even if he was sleepy, he did not want to sleep in the bedroom they’d given him in the house with two halves.  It smelled funny… like vinegar or liquor that had fermented too long to be drunk.  There was a funny mark on the wall and when he looked in the closet, the clothes were gone.  

“I thought she couldn’t come in my side of the house,” he wondered as he looked inside.  

Even if Fayette had reacted so well to the sight of him mostly naked, he did not think she came close to possessing the gumption to enter his side of the house.  There was no way she had removed the clothes in the closet.  There was something funny about the house.  He couldn’t stay still.  His instincts went berserk whenever he stood still.

True, Torsten had still not noticed the knife blades protruding from between the wooden slats that made up the floor.  But neither had he been caught by one of them.  They kept missing him because he kept moving.  He didn’t even pace in regular loops.  If the knives in the floor tried to predict which way he would move, they got it wrong every single time.

They were getting discouraged.

Night had already fallen, but Torsten had too much energy.  He needed more room to move around.  He went back outside.  The weather was very mild and even if the sun had set, the warmth clung to the air like body heat that, once given, could not be completely withdrawn.  

It was much more pleasant to be out of doors.  The evening primroses had opened and their fragrance filled the air.  It was a new scent to Torsten, but he preferred it to the stench of the house.  He picked a few of the flowers and with no idea what to do with them after he had picked them, he tore them to shreds.  He had no questions about whether or not he was loved.  

Fayette saw him stalking the yard like a predator of petals and she opened her window to lean out and speak to him.  “I’m sorry again about what happened during the bath,” she called down to him.

He glanced up at her.  Her arms were folded against the windowsill and her knightgown… He spelled that wrong.  He laughed at himself and spelled it right.  Her nightgown was far less concealing than her dress that afternoon, or even the bath sheet she used to cover herself that evening.  It showed the slender lines of her shoulders and the gentle curves her nightgown endeavored to cover, but failed, even in the darkness.  The white fabric attracted the lingering light and made her shine like she was the only star in the sky.  

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, thinking that she was trying his tricks on him.  He wouldn’t blush or turn a hundred shades of red just because she looked completely lovely.  He shot her a smile and continued his walk.

Unwilling to be dismissed, she tried again.  “What did you have for dinner in your kitchen?” 

“Uh…”  He hadn’t wanted to complain, so he had planned to say nothing, but if she asked, he felt that he ought to explain. “Most of the food was rotten.  There was one weird root that looked safe to eat so I ate it, but uh… I almost burned myself five times trying to cook it.  I ended up eating it raw.”  He left out how many times the knife slipped when he was trying to cut it up.  It was like the handle was dipped in oil or like the knife itself had a mind of its own.  “I was going to ask you how we’re going to live here indefinitely or how I’m supposed to produce blood if there’s nothing to feed me.”

Fayette was a thousand types of perplexed.  “I don’t understand.  My kitchen made me a stew for dinner and a pie with whipped cream for dessert.”

“Well, then something is wrong with my side of the house,” he said frankly, but still rather unwilling to admit to any major discomfort.  If he complained, acted like he needed something, acted like he couldn’t be without something, it would give her fuel with which to control him.  Obviously, she needed to feed him at bare minimum, but even so… he had to act like it didn’t matter if she fed him or not.

“How could that be?” she asked in wonder, confused at the inequality.  “The house is supposed to be the same on both halves.”

“Well, was your tub covered in filth?” he questioned sensibly.

“Hang on.”  She stepped away from the window.  

The next time he saw her, she had gotten redressed (in something that efficiently covered all her curves and dips) and brought him a meal that he was forced to eat in the gazebo since there was no other sensible place to eat it.  It was the leftover pie she hadn’t been able to finish.  

It was delicious and Torsten enjoyed it thoroughly.  Fruit pies had always been his favorite and though he had never had a peach pie before, he thought it was delicious.

“Why else are you out here?” she asked him as he set his fork on the pretty round porcelain plate on which she had served the pie.

“I don’t think I can sleep in my room,” he admitted, trying his damndest to make it seem like he would be able to sleep perfectly in her room.  “Just whisk out your contract, I’ll sign it and we’ll make it all legal.”

He knew instantly that he had pressed too far.  She was not going to accept that.

“What’s really wrong with your room?” she asked, sounding like a cranky governess who had been given too many child-minding duties.

“It smells.  The walls are melting.  I feel weird like I’m inside my own coffin when I’m in my bedroom,” he said breezily.  “You can go in and see for yourself if you’d like.”

“You know I can’t go in there.  What was your bedroom at home like?” she hedged, still trying to work in her agenda of getting to know him before they signed the papers.

He bit his lip and tore off a little skin with his teeth.  He did that when he was nervous.  “I had a room in a tower.  It was high above the castle, high above the forest.  I could see everything from there.  I was very valued by my household.  I had maids who served me whether I behaved well or not.  I tore apart my room when I learned that I would be sacrificed.”

“You sound like a brat,” she said, biting her own lips together.

“I might be a brat,” he said, turning his head and pulling on the collar of his shirt to expose his throat at greater advantage.  Having read too many romantic books written by women, he knew all the little tricks to get their hearts racing.  “I might be too much for you to handle.  I didn’t know enough about my future to control myself.  But it wasn’t the maids who cleaned my room that last time.  It was my sister who learned that I would be sacrificed instead of her.”

When he glanced at Fayette, he knew he had hit her where it hurt.  He’d done so back at the bath as well.  He showed a part of himself that was wounded and hit her with a dose of sexual need, suggesting that was the way to comfort him.  He congratulated himself.  When Fayette gave up, he was going to make one hell of a husband if he could get her going so easily.

“Well, don’t wreck your side of the house just because you’re not getting what you want,” she said, refuting him.  She stood up and reached to take the plate from him.  “I notice you haven’t asked me any questions about me.”

He held onto the plate and wouldn’t let her take it.  “Do you have much practice?”

“In what?” she asked, perplexed.

He favored her with a level regard.  “In making men do what you want?” 

She glared at him but said nothing.  

He met her glare with a smile.   “You’ve already done the most important bit,” he said as he let go of the plate.

“What’s that?” she asked, unable to leave without first satisfying her curiosity.

“You told me you want to drain my blood once every two weeks.  We can do that.  Where would you like to drain it from?  My wrist?” He flipped his hand over and showed a bare bit of skin that had never been broken in all his life.  “My throat?” he gave her another view of his jawbone and the side of his neck.  “My heart?”  He pulled at his collar and was lucky enough to undo two buttons in the motion, giving her a glimpse of his bare chest.

She colored again and raced back toward her side of the house.

Torsten frowned.  The little elfin princess wasn’t very good at contending with him.  Why had they given such a big job to such a little girl?

The Extra Tail in the Fairy Tale

The plate was very disappointed in Fayette.  It said as much to the fork when they were drying on the tea towel after Fayette washed them.  

“He’s giving her what she wants!” the plate exclaimed.  

“Yes, he’s giving her what she wants,” the fork agreed, but that wasn’t all it had to say.  “But it’s not how she wants it.  It’s complicated for her.  She doesn’t want to draw his blood personally, but that’s the job she’s been given.”

“It was the job she applied for when she signed up to be a librarian,” the plate reminded the fork.  “All librarians can be called upon to be the one to marry a human.”

“But is it what she wanted?  Did she want to be the one to marry a human?” the fork asked, unhappy that they didn’t have more information.  The fork was just cutlery and the plate was just crockery.  They didn’t know anything.

The plate looked as sage as the moon as it answered.  “I think it is what she wanted, but you know librarians.  Her head was full of fairy tales and fiction.  She thought all this would be romantic.”

“She doesn’t think Torsten is romantic?” the fork wondered.

“Nah.  Torsten is too romantic.  Have you seen the way he held his thumb up a little when he talked to her?  It’s because he’s measuring her.  He wants to paint her, but she is wildly unprepared to let him paint her.”

“Because she’d have to be as naked as you and me,” the fork concluded.

“Speak for yourself.  I was wearing a pie earlier,” the plate pointed out.  “I didn’t mind him stripping me naked.”

“That’s because you’re all showy, doing a strip tease while the guest cuts away part of the pie you’re wearing to show your pattern underneath,” the fork said snarkily under its breath.

“But I agree he’s just moving too fast for her,” the plate said noisily.  “Though it’s probably a good thing that he’s rushing.  He can’t stay in his half of the house.  The other side of this house is not hospitable like us.  I haven’t heard a word from the plates on the other side.  They are so unfriendly.”

“I just hear knives over there talking.  I shouldn’t be able to hear them, should I?  Especially if you can’t hear the plates,” the fork wondered.  “It’s like there are hundreds of them, scraping against each other.  It’s weird.  If I listen really closely, I can hear them talk about cutting like they’re obsessed.”

“Well, they’re knives,” the plate reminded the fork.  “What else are they supposed to talk about?”

“It still seems weird to me.  Our knives don’t talk like that.  Maybe Torsten can hear them too and that’s why he spends all his time wandering around the yard.”

“Maybe,” the plate agreed as it settled down into the folds of the tea towel it was drying on.

The fork gave the plate one last glance before it fell asleep too.